What can/should i be doing?

[Guest treborg]

Knowing what I can or should do to help my partner deal with and combat her OCD.

[Guest treborg]

My wife suffers from contamination OCD. She had her first 'breakdown' in May 2014. She has been to GP and been diagnosed. She has has two referals for CBT both lasted for 10 weekly sessions.

She was on meds but she stopped taking these late last year as we were starting a family. Currently pregnant, she cannot take the meds.

As a husband i am worried i am re-enforcing her behaviours mainly so i can minimise her distress.

What i do includes:

-Not doing laundry, she flips if i do.

-Using only our Ensuite bathroom (not main one thst guests use)

-Not going in the laundry room (if i do, or any one else, she rewashes all the clean clothes)

-Not using our Balcony (there are a Gay couple living above us with a dog, this freaks her out)

-Responding to texts/calls asking if i locked the door when i left, or if i washed my hands after doing cleaning chores etc

My question is how do i just stop doing these things without triggering a breakdown.

My wife is highly anxious about the pregnancy, she has mapped it all out and picked out all that could go wrong from now 11 wks to the birth. She does not have any interest in watching TV or films and instead will play games on her phone alone in the bedroom.

I am worried for the future, how will she be with our child, i know after birth she will resume the meds, they do help. She is also currently seeing a CBT therapist privately on a weekly/2week basis. But i fear i am undoing the work the therpist does because i don't know what i should be doing.

[mat2dmh]

Hi. What you are both going through sounds really hard. My partner also has OCD with contamination issues.

The first thing you need to realise is that it isn't your responsibility to get your wife better. Indeed, the power in beating OCD is choice. Your wife has to choose to allow you to not compulse - In this way she will be facing her issues. Of course, you are perfectly entitled to refuse to compulse, but in my opinion and experience this isn't encouraging your wife to face her issues.

You need to have a dialog with your wife so you can question her about asking you to compulse. You should agree this at a calm time, not in the middle of compulsing.

Hope this helps,

Dave

[PolarBear]

No, you shouldn't be helping her with her compulsions. That just keeps her stuck. Ideally you would talk to her and she would understand and agree to you not helping her with compulsions and then you would stop.

[carolj]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

I agree, one of the biggest problems as a family member is not knowing how to help.

I found with my son it was really useful to go to one of my son's therapy sessions and let the therapist tell both of us how I could assist in his treatment and what I should and shouldn't be doing. As you are paying privately for the treatment I dont think this would be a problem. It also meant that my son would hear from the therapist that I shouldn't be assisting rather than it coming directly from me.

I would also suggest the group MaternalOCD http://www.maternalocd.org I know Diana Wilson one of the organisers well. She is a lovely lady who has experienced exactly this herself. They have just started up a support group, I believe in London, but of course London is a big place and it might not be where you are.